Māori food words: kai, kūmara, hāngī, rēwena

The Māori food words to learn first are kai ‘food; to eat’, kūmara ‘sweet potato’, hāngī ‘earth oven, and the food cooked in it’ and rēwena ‘potato-yeast bread’. Kai means food or a meal, and as a verb it means to eat. A hāngī is a pit oven in which food is steamed for a few hours over heated stones, and the word also means the meal that comes out of it. Rēwena is a loaf leavened with a starter made from boiled potato. Below are those four and the rest: the traditional foods and seafood, the cooking words, the loanwords, what to say at the table, and the karakia said before eating.

Updated 17 October 2026 · 9 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

What does kai mean?

Te Aka Māori Dictionary gives kai as a noun, food, meal, and as a verb, to eat, consume. It adds a sense English speakers do not expect: as a verb, kai is also used for drinking any liquid other than water. The one word covers both halves of a meal:

Words built on kai

Te Aka also lists mātaitai for seafood. Do not confuse kai the food with kai- at the front of a verb, which makes the person who does it: kaimahi ‘worker’, kaiako ‘teacher’. That one is explained in Māori words at work, and the short list of food words New Zealanders use in English is in Māori words in New Zealand English.

What is a hāngī?

Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, describes the hāngī as a traditional Māori way of cooking that suits large numbers of people. A shallow pit is dug, and hot rocks and water make steam in it. The food goes in on top of the rocks, meat first and then vegetables, and is covered with leaves, flax mats or, today, sacking or cloth. The soil is put back to hold the steam in for a few hours; how many depends on the size of the hāngī. Around Rotorua, hāngī have been cooked with geothermal steam for centuries.

Te Aka gives the word two meanings, the earth oven and the food cooked in it, so a hāngī is both something you cook in and something you eat. The other word for an earth oven is umu. As pots and ovens took over everyday cooking the hāngī was used less often, but Te Ara notes that it is still the meal for special occasions and large gatherings such as tangihanga.

Kūmara: the crop that came from South America

Kūmara is the sweet potato. Te Ara says the Polynesian ancestors of Māori brought it to New Zealand in the 13th century, along with taro, gourds, yams and a tropical cabbage tree. Unlike those, the kūmara had probably reached Polynesia earlier with voyagers from South America.

New Zealand was too cold for it to grow all year as it did in the tropics, so Māori kept the tubers through the winter and planted them out in summer. It could only be grown in the warmer north and on the coast of the northern South Island, with Banks Peninsula the southern limit. The stored kūmara were kept in rua kūmara ‘kūmara pits’, dug on slopes so that water never lay in them. Tribal traditions differ on how it came: people of the Horouta canoe say their ancestor Hinehākirirangi looked after the kūmara on that canoe, and Te Arawa and Tainui traditions name Whakaotirangi.

The kūmara most people eat now is newer. Te Ara traces the commonest modern variety, Ōwairaka Red, to Rarotongan sweet potatoes aboard a whaling ship moored at Ōpōtiki in the 1850s. In the Māori world the kūmara has its own atua: Te Aka gives Rongo as the atua of peace, of kūmara and of all cultivated foods.

Rēwena bread, fried bread and takakau

Flour and wheat came with Europeans, and Te Ara names three breads Māori made with them that are still widely made today.

• Rēwena is a large loaf baked in the oven and leavened with a culture made from the water of boiled potatoes. Te Ara says it takes time to master: the flavour should be both sweet and sour, and the texture not too dry. Te Aka marks rēwena as a loanword, meaning leaven or yeast as well as the bread itself, which Te Ara calls rewena bread.
• Parāoa parai is fried bread: a simple dough cut or rolled into buns and deep-fried, then split and filled with jam, golden syrup, or something savoury such as kina. Parāoa is bread, flour or dough, and parai is to fry; Te Aka marks both as borrowed.
• Takakau is a flat, unleavened bread, also called cartwheel bread for its shape, cooked in the oven or the fire. Te Ara suggests it with butter and jam, or to mop up a boil-up.

The boil-up is the other dish Te Ara singles out: pork, pūhā and potatoes boiled in one big pot, to which kūmara and kamokamo can be added, with flour-and-water dumplings, doughboys, steamed on top.

Traditional Māori foods

Each word below is checked against Te Aka. The first table is what grows; the second is fish and birds.

The Science Learning Hub, from the University of Waikato, describes taewa as the traditional potato varieties Māori have grown since the late 18th century and kept through the generations. Te Ara adds that the potato reached Māori in the 1780s, was easier to grow than kūmara, and spread across the country. Of the sow thistles Te Aka calls pūhā, only one is native to New Zealand.

The same birds and fish as living animals, with the words for the rest of the native fauna, are in Māori birds and animals.

Kaimoana: Māori words for seafood

Te Ara notes that while fishing was largely men’s work, gathering shellfish was traditionally a job for women, and that each tribe had its own named fishing grounds looked after by guardians. Kōura has a second meaning that learners meet in Māori colours: it is also gold.

Cooking words, and the fermented foods

Before Europeans arrived, Te Ara explains, Māori made no pottery, so the only way to boil food was to drop a red-hot stone into a wooden bowl of liquid. Small things such as fish and birds were grilled on sticks over the embers instead.

Fermenting was a way of keeping food. Te Ara describes steeping it in a flax basket in slow-running water for days or weeks, first for crayfish and fish and later for corn. The corn dish is kānga pirau, which Te Ara describes as looking like porridge, with a very strong smell; Te Aka’s names for fermented corn are kānga wai and kānga kōpiro, and crayfish fermented in fresh water is kōura mara.

Loanwords: bread, butter, cheese and apples

Many foods that arrived with Europeans took borrowed names, reshaped to Māori sounds. Te Aka marks each of these as a loanword.

How each one is said, and why a Māori word never ends in a consonant, is in the Māori pronunciation guide.

At the table: hungry, full and thank you

More phrases for everyday use, including how to say please and how to answer thank you, are in common Māori phrases.

Karakia mō te kai: the blessing before eating

A karakia mō te kai blesses the food before a meal. This traditional one is published by Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Māori Development, and by the University of Otago:

Both versions end with a closing line of affirmation, which they spell slightly differently. The food comes from atua: Te Aka gives Tāne Mahuta as the atua of the forest, Tangaroa of the sea and fish, and Rongo of cultivated food.

Where to go from here

Food comes up in the Matariki stars too: Tupuānuku is linked with food grown in the ground, Tupuārangi with food from the trees and sky, and Waitī and Waitā with food from fresh water and the sea. They are in Matariki words. Nearly every food word on this page is taught in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course (our own), where the sentences above come from and where you can hear them in Papa Reo’s native te reo voice.

Sources

1. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand: Kūmara – introducing kūmara to New Zealand
2. Te Ara: Māori foods – kai Māori – traditional growing and gathering
3. Te Ara: Māori foods – kai Māori – traditional cooking and preserving (hāngī, boiling, fermenting, rua kūmara, Ōwairaka Red)
4. Te Ara: Māori foods – kai Māori – foods introduced by Europeans (potato, boil-up, kānga pirau, rewena bread, paraoa parai, takakau)
5. Te Ara: Māori foods – kai Māori – modern cuisine
6. Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao (University of Waikato): Taewa (Māori potatoes) – introduction
7. Te Puni Kōkiri: He karakia – Karakia mō te kai
8. University of Otago: Karakia – karakia mō te kai
9. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kai — to eat; to drink any liquid other than water; food, meal.
10. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kaimoana and kai moana — seafood, shellfish.
11. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mātaitai — seafood, shellfish.
12. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: wharekai — dining hall, refectory, cafe, restaurant.
13. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: māra — garden; mara — fermented, steeped in freshwater.
14. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kūmara — sweet potato.
15. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hāngī — earth oven; food cooked in an earth oven.
16. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: umu — oven, earth oven.
17. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rēwena (loan) — leaven; bread made with potato yeast.
18. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: parāoa (loan) — bread, flour, dough.
19. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: parai (loan) — to fry; frying pan.
20. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: takakau — unleavened bread.
21. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pūhā — sow thistles, boiled and eaten as a green vegetable.
22. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pikopiko — young curved fern shoots.
23. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kamokamo — squash, marrow, eaten young.
24. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: taewa and rīwai — potato.
25. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kānga (loan) — corn, maize; kānga wai, kānga kōpiro — fermented corn.
26. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kōura mara — crayfish fermented in fresh water.
27. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tītī — muttonbird, sooty shearwater.
28. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tuna, kōkopu, pāua, kina, kōura, pipi, tuatua and kūtai.
29. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tunu, tao and kōhua — to cook, roast; to cook; to boil, pot.
30. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pata, tīhi and āporo (loans) — butter, cheese, apple.
31. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hiakai, hiainu and mākona — be hungry, be thirsty, be satisfied.
32. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ngaki — to clear, weed, cultivate (passive ngakia, ngakina).
33. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Rongo — atua of peace, kūmara and all cultivated foods.
34. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Tangaroa — atua of the sea and fish; Tāne Mahuta — atua of the forest.